Nigeria Reading and Access Research Activity: STTA trip report

RTI representative Dr. F. Henry (Hank) Healey traveled to Nigeria from April 13 to 25, 2014, to provide short-term technical assistance (STTA) in developing an equitable framework for monitoring access to education in northern Nigeria for the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID’s) Nigeria Reading and Access Research Activity (RARA). The primary objective of the STTA was to conduct formative research into the specific education access issues that girls and disadvantaged populations are facing in Northern Nigeria. The task of RTI’s visit was to conduct various meetings with key people in the state departments of education in Bauchi and Sokoto, key people outside the governments (i.e., parents, adolescent children, civil society leaders), and project staff, to gain insight into the breadth and depth of the access issue and the various barriers to access for certain groups of students (i.e., girls, ethnic minorities, poor, etc.). Information gleaned would be used to inform the equitable monitoring framework for RARA. To complete the task, RTI conducted a series of meetings first with the RARA Technical Working Group (TWG), then with government officials from both Bauchi and Sokoto states, and with village elders and adolescent girls from two villages in each of those states as well.